Mastering Your Own Mind

When I first started to meditate, I absolutely hated it. Sometime last year, I downloaded the Headspace app and got myself all pumped up about it. Within 30 seconds of starting, I was already impatient, frustrated, bored and annoyed; I just could NOT sit still. 1 minute seemed like an eternity. But as I started to work my way up from 30 seconds to 30 minutes, I was able to grasp the concept of meditation and take notice of the huge benefits I had gained from it every time.

Thinking back to when I first started meditating reminds me of one of my favorite movies growing up, Kindergarten Cop, that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Kimble.

If you haven’t seen the movie, Mr. Kimble is an undercover detective who is trying to find the wife and son of a drug dealer before the drug dealer can find them. Mr. Kimble is partnered with another undercover detective, Phoebe, who was a former teacher before becoming a detective. Because Phoebe was a former teacher, she was initially supposed to be the undercover kindergarten teacher to find the son but, unfortunately, she falls victim to the stomach flu. And so because of her illness, Mr Kimble takes over as the kindergarten teacher.

Mr. Kimble had no idea how to teach nor did he know how to deal with the kids. He was pretty annoyed by it all. His first day was very chaotic as the kids were running all over the place wrecking havoc, which caused him to get all heated and act like a hot headed idiot. His main intention was to try to find the wife and son but he wouldn’t be able to do that if he allowed the kids to continuously wreck havoc and distract him from solving the case. So he devised a way to get the kids to calm down and pay attention to him, which turned out way better than he imagined because he kept putting in the work with the kids. So in the end, not only was he able to solve his case, but he realized how much he liked teaching kindergarten.

So when I first started meditating, I was like the hot headed Mr. Kimble in the beginning and my thoughts were the little kids running around wrecking havoc. The only thing I knew how to do was to react by getting fired up and frustrated instead of responding by just observing, which would naturally create a solution. The more I meditated, the more kids would show up and the more I would react, but that’s just how meditation works when you start, especially if you have a lot of toxic junk embedded into your subconscious mind.

When you start to meditate, it’s not always rainbows and butterflies. A lot of the things you just don’t want to deal with start to surface and make you feel real uncomfortable. What you had once swept under the rug or kept in the closet will now start to show up almost as if you’ve opened Pandora’s box and cannot shut it ever again. The toxic thoughts you have about yourself will also start to bubble up to the surface. But that’s a good thing because that’s the opportunity to pack it up and throw it out with the garbage.

The amount of crap that started to surface was unreal and real uncomfortable. But I did what I needed to do to free myself from it by meditating for a minute at a time. You just sit there and shut up. You focus on your breathing and allow the crappy emotions and toxic thoughts to surface and do their dance of annoyance and poke at you whenever it wants. Anytime you rage and get upset about it, you stay a prisoner of your own mind, instead of becoming a master of it. And when you keep allowing your toxic thoughts to control you, all you’re doing is becoming your own worst enemy.

Side note:I know about becoming your own worst enemy because I’ve gone through it many times. It was very difficult for me to get out of that state of being because I’m not only left-handed but I’m cross dominant. This means I switch back and forth from left to right hemispheres in the brain a lot which causes a lot of neurological confusion, especially emotions. I have my own fascinating theory about this as there isn’t a vast amount of credible sources on the internet, yet because I’ve looked many times. But it takes more than just a blog post to explain. So if you are interested in the neurological aspects of cross dominance, google “cross dominance and emotions”.

So, the best thing to do when crappy emotions and toxic thoughts bubble up is just to acknowledge it, observe it, say hello, tell it whatevs then go back to paying attention to your breathing. It sucks to the max at first but do this like a champ over and over again and watch how you start to respond to everything in life.

Got fired from a job that was of no fault of your own and got shut down by another job you really wanted? When you respond correctly to these situations, don’t be surprised if you land an even better job and get a call back from the job you were fired from, begging you to come back. This even happens with relationships. If you get dumped by someone by no fault of your own but respond to it correctly by being ok with it and moving on, don’t be surprised if you meet someone better with the ex begging for you to come back.

These things happen only when you are in the correct state of being, which is self love. You become a master of your mind by simply observing everything and taking correct action instead of losing yourself and running amok to what doesn’t represent self love. When you meditate consistently, you keep yourself aligned and allow the door of opportunities to stay open and flow effortlessly.

The funny thing is that when you meditate enough to finally align with the correct mindset, you won’t even care about all the infinite possibilities being thrown at you. The romantic relationship you’ve always wanted, the career you’ve always wanted and the financial independence you’ve always wanted will all be thrown in your face begging you to take them. But you’ll be so aligned with your inner state of being that when these gifts are presented to you, you won’t get excited about them at all.

Why? Because these gifts in the material world are only a representation of your true, ultimate gift, which is your inner state of being. You’re more excited about what these gifts represent than what they are. When you are presented with something that isn’t considered a “gift” like getting fired from a job, you see it as something more meaningful than the romantic relationship because you allowed yourself to view a different perspective on it naturally by training your mind to respond to everything and not react. If you can continuously respond in situations like that, you have the ability to master your own mind. And that can only happen through continuous meditation.

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8 thoughts on “Mastering Your Own Mind”

Thanks. Very informative blog post on meditation. You made me want to watch Kindergarten Cop again! LOL! My youngest son loved that movie when he was growing up. “It’s not a tooma” was his favorite quote! Loved the clip… such a funny movie.

We say that quote all the time. I remember once when my son woke up with a huge knot on his leg. He walked in the den and showed it to me, and I gasped and said, “WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THAT?! (I thought he had banged his leg in the middle of the night or something). He looked at me and without missing a beat, he said, “I don’t know but it’s not a tooma!” We had a good laugh over that!

The first time my yoga teacher I asked me to breathe deeply and just say to myself, ‘I surrender,’ I burst into tears. All those feelings that I pushed down so well just bubbled up to the service with all the breathing. Uncomfortable as it was, I’ve never forgotten that amazing feeling of letting it all go. So breathe deeply 🙂